Sussan Babaie

Fulbright Regional Scholar, Egypt and Syria

2009 Winner

Isfahan and its Palaces is a brilliant exploration of Isfahan’s palatial architecture in conjunction with court culture during the late Safavid era. The first English-language study of the Safavid capital as it was established by Shah `Abbas and evolved under his successors, it makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the rituals of kingship as expressed in the choreography of public conviviality and the etiquette of gift-exchange during a critically transformative period in Iranian history. Interdisciplinary in her approach and relying on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Sussan Babaie suggests a new reading of the spatial layout of the various ceremonial venues in conjunction with their theatrical uses as stages for processions, receptions and banquets. Her work offers an astute analysis of various elements of material culture—food and drink, tableware, gifts, landscaping—and combines this with an exploration of the symbolic and even spiritual meaning of aspects of royal feasting such as seating arrangements and the ideal of chivalry, showing how all of it was designed to enhance the status of the ruler as the conduit for divinely dispensed magnanimity as well as to confirm political hierarchies. By tracing the evolution of the Safavid capital from its beginnings in Qazvin to its culmination in Isfahan, the book ultimately charts the transformation of the Safavid polity from a steppe formation to a sedentary, centralized court system embodying the charismatic absolutism of Perso-Shi’i statecraft. Beautifully produced, Isfahan and Its Palaces suggests new directions in the study of this significant period in Iran’s history.

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